


Always together, forever apart

by marguerite_26



Series: my mating games ficlets and drabbles [11]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ladyhawke Fusion, F/M, Fairy Tale Curses, Full Shift Werewolves, M/M, Multi, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:56:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1714685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marguerite_26/pseuds/marguerite_26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Stiles agrees to take Derek Hale and the grey wolf he travels with to Beacon Hills, he had no idea he'd be caught up in a world of curses and love and heartache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always together, forever apart

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [melusinahp](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Melusinahp), [faithwood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faithwood) and [OnTheTurningAway](http://archiveofourown.org/users/OnTheTurningAway) for the beta during the various stages of this.
> 
> The original version (750 words) was my submission of Mating Games, week 2 challenge: Beast within. Somehow when I expanded the fic I lost the porn and bestiality. Not sure how that happened.  
> 

"Rumor has it you know where to find the Hale pack."

Stiles narrows his eyes at the stranger. "What's it to you?"

The grey wolf by the man's side growls and Stiles wonders how he even got that thing into the bar. Charlie probably took one look the guy's biceps and his wolf's teeth, and figured it wasn't worth the fight. Some bouncer.

The man's unshaven, pale and gaunt like he never sleeps. He hovers over Stiles in a way that has Stiles checking his path to the exits.

"Let's just say my uncle and I have unfinished business," he says.

"You're a Hale?" Stiles shrinks back involuntarily as unpleasant memories of him and Scott getting caught in the woods during high school float to mind.

The man's pale eyes bore into Stiles. Ignoring his question, he slaps a wad of cash on the table next to Stiles' drink. "Five thousand to take us into Hale territory, and you can mind your business along the way." 

\--

Stiles often told himself he'd go back someday. Chauffeuring Derek Hale just shifts his timeline a bit. He packs up his meager belongings and kisses New York goodbye without regret.

\--

Derek's given Stiles five thousand reasons to not ask questions. When Derek says, "Sunset's in thirty minutes. Stop at the next motel," Stiles takes the nearest exit even though they could get another three hours driving in tonight.

They drive around until they find a motel crappy enough to ignore the wolf they're travelling with. 

Bored and restless a few hours later, Stiles knocks on Derek's motel room door to ask when they're planning on hitting the road tomorrow morning. He's stunned silent when a woman answers with her bathrobe gaping enough to make Stiles blush. Before he can apologize -- or even process how Derek found time to pick up someone literally in the middle of _nowhere_ , -- she drags him into the room.

"You must be Stiles," she says. "I'm Cora."

His eyes dart around the room, expecting Derek to kick him out or possibly kill him for interrupting. It takes him a minute to realize Derek isn't even there. The clothes Derek had been wearing that day litter the bed, and the bathroom door is open, so he wasn't taking a post-sex shower. 

"Where's--"

A growl from the corner of the room makes him spin around. Instead of the grey wolf that rode in the back seat of the Jeep for the last day, this wolf was midnight-black. 

"Oh, hey… that's a different wolf."

"Aren't you a fucking genius." Cora flops on the bed, kicking Derek's clothes to the floor. "You might as well come in. We can charge a bunch of movies to Derek's account."

"Cool," Stiles says, not entirely sure why the black wolf is scowling at him.

\--

The next morning, Stiles wakes snuggled into the grey wolf's fur instead of Cora's shoulder and Derek's sitting across from him and looking pissier than usual.

Maybe Stiles crashing on Derek's bed with Derek's girl hadn't been the best idea.

He scrubs at his face, wanting to be awake enough to run if Derek wants to use him as a punching bag. 

"Sorry for stealing time with your hook-up, dude," Stiles says. "You were gone. I swear we just watched movies."

"Cora's my sister, idiot," Derek snaps and storms out of the room. 

The window panes rattle from the force of the door slamming.

\--

Next night, they're in a new city a few miles closer to Beacon Hills. Again, Derek demands they stop before sunset like a child afraid of the dark. They find yet another crappy motel. 

"Don't come to my room," Derek says. And Stiles is more than happy to keep out of trouble. The drive had been painful with the grinding of Derek's teeth drowning out the radio.

Within an hour of checking in, Cora barges into Stiles' room wearing Derek's leather jacket and the same purple henley Derek had worn all day. The surly black wolf sneaks in behind her.

They're clearly travelling together -- Stiles, the Hale siblings, the two wolves, all heading to Beacon Hills. He doesn't understand why they're not all squishing into the Jeep. He knows better than to ask.

Cora looks through Derek's jacket pockets and laughs in triumph when she finds enough spare change for the vending machine down the hall. "Want anything, loser?" She's scowling like Derek, but Stiles reads it as fondness anyway.

\---

Stiles wakes again with his face buried in grey fur. He blinks, startled and a little panicked. The grey wolf just stands, shakes off the leather jacket draped over its back and jumps off the bed. 

On Stiles' other pillow is Derek, laid out naked in the place the black wolf had been. 

"Holy shit," Stiles says as he finally figures it out.

\--

"Are we going to talk about this?" Stiles asks while they barrel down a deserted highway in the middle of New Mexico. 

"There's nothing to talk about," Derek replies after a long moment's silence. "Our uncle cursed us."

"Your _uncle_?" Stiles shakes his head in disbelief. He knew Peter was ruthless, everyone in Beacon Hills knew that. But he had thought werewolves considered family sacred. "Shit, why?"

Derek glances at Cora, who's sleeping in the back with her muzzle tucked under her paws.

"After our parents died, Cora became my… my _everything_. We were each other's worlds." Derek stares straight ahead, face blank and eyes dead. "Peter can't see something beautiful without needing to destroy it."

Stiles bites his lips to stop the rant that's forming in his brain. Fucking Peter.

"She's lonely," Derek says when Stiles doesn't respond. "You're good for her." The words are kind but Stiles gets the impression they were torn from Derek's chest. Now he's left bleeding out from them. 

\--

They only get one hotel room that night. All pretense dissolved, Stiles watches Derek strip off his clothes as dusk falls, stares in amazement as man becomes wolf and wolf becomes girl.

"I bought you something," Stiles says, holding out the Target bag and trying to keep his eyes above the shoulders. 

Cora's face lights up as she digs out a cheap pair of tennis shoes, leggings and a t-shirt. 

"I didn't know your size but--" 

Cora shakes her head. "It's fine. Thank you," she says before darting into the bathroom to dress. 

They go for a walk that night, skipping stones into a stream. The moon is bright and the crickets are loud. Derek's close by, keeping watch and chasing off the occasional rodent that gets too close. 

Back at the motel, Cora curls into Stiles' chest. Derek nestles between them, his head resting on their joined hips.

"Tell him," she says. "Tell that him that I love him so fucking much." She strokes between Derek's ears until his eyes shut in contentment. Her face is all screwed up with emotion. "Still. Always." 

Stiles feels a pang of jealousy and tries to bury it deep. 

As the world turns bright and dawn chases away the shadows, Cora clutches Derek's fur, tears in her eyes, like she refuses to let go. Inevitably, Cora's delicate fingers turn to paws at the same moment that the fur she's clinging to becomes naked skin. Deep, bloody scratches slice into Derek's shoulders.

The marks fade in an instant -- as though Derek isn't permitted to keep her claim any more than he's allowed to see her face with human eyes.

\--

Stiles relays the message once Derek recovers from the intensity of the change. They are still in bed, a tangle of human and animal limbs, he and Derek and Cora as the grey wolf.

His face burns hot, but he stares into Derek's eyes as he says Cora's words. He owes them that much. 

"I'll drive," Derek says, as though Stiles hadn't spoken. "You were awake all night." 

It sounds like an accusation.

\--

"There has to be a way to break the curse," Stiles says when they stop for lunch. 

"There isn't!" Derek snaps and quickly changes to a hushed whisper so the old ladies sitting on the other side of the diner will stop staring. "Don't fill Cora's head with ideas." 

_Don't give us hope_ , Cora had said as they walked along the edge of the stream, but her eyes had sparked with interest when Stiles talked of wanting to help.

"He has to see us both," Derek said, his eyes trained on his coffee. "We have to appear in human form, both of us together, for Peter to witness. Then the curse will be broken. Since that can't possibly happen, there's nothing more to talk about. We're stuck like this but at least-- at least we have each other." 

_Always together, forever apart._

Chest aching with the weight of their loneliness, Stiles lets the conversation drop.

\--

He's never been one to give up easily.

"Is there really no way to break curse?" Stiles asks Cora, his back to her while she changes. 

"When it first happened, we looked. Derek pretty much lived for nothing but researching curses. But it got to be too much, for both of us." She sighs and it sounds defeated. "We had to just… move on. You can turn around now, idiot."

He starts to pace. Pacing makes him feel better, makes him _think_ better. "I just don't get that, okay. I just -- it's unacceptable."

Cora gives him a humorless laugh. "Derek used to leave me notes: Acceptance is survival."

She picks up Derek's jacket, staring at it like she's remembering something. She runs her hand along the inside, concentrating. "There was a time I thought maybe…"

"Ha!" she says when something in the jacket crinkles. She looks excited as she rips open the lining and digs her hand into the hole. She pulls out a crumpled envelope, waving it at the black wolf. "I knew you kept it, you bastard!" 

She hands it to Stiles.

"When this first happened Dr. Alan Deaton had suggested one possible way," she says. "But the date he gave us to break the curse was _years_ away. We'd been more hopeful then. Angrier. The thought of waiting… well. I thought Derek threw this out. When we gave up, he burned all our research."

Stiles skims the pages until he sees a date underlined and circled. "Shit. Cora, that's Sunday."

She stares at Derek, lips tight. "What aren't you telling us?"

The wolf huffs, curls up in a corner and ignores them for the rest of the night. 

\--

The next morning, Stiles holds up the letter, waving it in Derek's face. "You have this all planned! You're going to break the curse, so why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"Don't," Derek says, grabbing the letter, crumpling it up and tossing it into the trash.

"What--" Stiles flails, diving for it like it might disappear any second.

Derek grabs his wrist, grip tight enough he can feel his bones grinding. "Leave it." 

"But I don't understand. We are going to Beacon Hills! If we travel through the night tonight, we'd get there in enough time to find Peter and do this. You had to have planned it this way."

"Dammit, Stiles. Enough!" Derek slams Stiles against the motel room door. He can hear the wood crack with the force of it. "Your job is to get me into Peter's territory. I'll kill him and this will be over."

"You kill Peter and the curse will be permanent! I read the letter."

"The curse is already permanent! It's _hope_ that's killing us. If we try and fail, Peter is going to take Cora from me. Don't you understand? I won't let her be anywhere near him. I would rather be cursed forever. I would rather die."

"But you coming here now, you planned this."

"I changed my mind!" Derek looks so wrecked, his face more drawn and eyes more sunken than they were a few days ago. The weight of his decision had to be wearing on him. 

The fight seems to go out of him and he loosens his grip on Stiles' shirt, moves back enough Stiles is no longer pinned to the door. But he's still close enough that his slow exhale tickles Stiles' cheek. 

"Forget about Deaton and his stupid ideas," Derek says, so quiet it sounds like he's begging. "Will you get me to my uncle?"

"I said I would."

"Thank you," Derek says, tugging Stiles forward until their lips brush. "Give that to her for me. And tell her I'm sorry."

Stiles has to crank up the AC in the Jeep as thoughts of the kiss haunt him all afternoon. 

\--

Once the sun sets, Stiles hands Cora the balled up remains of the letter he'd salvaged from the trash right before they checked out. "He's not trying to break the curse. He wants to kill Peter." 

Cora stares at the letter a moment, then squeezes it inside a tight fist. Growling, she pitches it across the room. "He's a goddamn bastard! This is our chance."

"He's worried about you," Stiles says, even though he feels like a fool defending Derek's decision. "He thinks Peter will take you. And, um, _keep_ you if Deaton's plan fails."

"Well, too fucking bad," she says, voice raw with emotion. "We're going to do this."

Stiles sighs. "What do you need me to do? Other than go fetch _all the hopes for your future_ from ending up in the trash. Again." He has to lay on his stomach on the filthy motel room carpet to reach the letter where it fell behind the bed. Fucking Hales.

\--

Derek as a wolf is much more compliant than Derek as a human. He protects Cora above all else, so when she dresses and checks out of the motel (only an hour after they'd checked in), Derek follows her out to Stiles' Jeep. 

They drive all night and stop twenty minutes outside of Beacon Hills just before dawn.

"Derek asked me to give you something," Stiles says as they review the various entrances to the Preserve. 

"Well?" Cora raises an eyebrow, looking so much like Derek that Stiles almost laughs. 

"Please don't kill me," he whispers as he closes the distance between them. He presses his lips to hers, debating on keeping it chaste. But Derek's kiss had been pretty awesome, so Stiles tries to do it justice. 

Cora's arms wind around his neck and she kisses back with even more urgency than her brother had. Stiles knows he's not what either of them wants most, but if he can give them a moment's solace it's hard to feel guilty about it. 

"Take care of him," she says, licking at the wetness of her bottom lip. "If things don't go as we plan, just make sure he's not alone."

\--

The moment after his transformation, Derek takes one look at his surroundings and punches Stiles in the face.

"Asshole!" Stiles cradles his jaw. "We have a plan!"

"No, _I_ have a plan. You are staying with Cora," he demands. "I need to do this alone."

"No, you asshole. The whole point of today is to do this together. We're here. We can do this. The timing is right."

"Stiles. I can't risk it. What if your plan fails, and Peter takes her? She'll be his. Every. Night. She'll belong to him."

"She's willing to risk it."

"And are you? I can smell her all over you, you know." Derek takes one look at him and Stiles knows his face is confessing just how much he's fallen for the woman Derek loves. "That's what I thought."

Derek takes the grey wolf a few feet away from the Jeep. Kneeling in the dirt, he hugs her close. Stiles tries not to watch, but he can't help it. For a long time, harsh, raspy whispers carry unintelligibly over the distance between them. Stiles wipes at his wet cheeks.

"Look after her," Derek says as he comes back to the Jeep. "If I don't make it back, take her far away from here."

Fucking Hales. Stiles surges forward, kissing Derek until they are both breathless. Cora brushes against their legs until they break apart.

Clearing his throat, Derek grabs the maps. "Just look after her," he says, and he starts for the southernmost entrance to the Preserve. 

"Just don't die, asshole," Stiles shouts after him, his hand buried in the grey wolf's fur. Luckily, he has a few plans of his own.

\--

It takes longer that Stiles expected to find them. They're cutting it so close, he almost turns back, but there they are in a clearing, Peter and Derek, facing off alone. He has to hold Cora by the scruff of her neck to stop her from attacking. 

"You can't kill me, Derek," Peter says. He's laughing like their heartbreak is all so amusing to him. "You'll never see her again."

"It'll be worth it if you're dead," Derek says, fangs bared as he circles his uncle.

"Does she agree? Will she ever forgive you?" Peter sounds delighted at the prospect of Cora's fury. "You see, I still win. I'll be dead but she'll hate you."

As if the damning words were an omen, the clearing becomes cast in shadow. Stiles squints up at the sun to see the starting of the solar eclipse and blinks away quickly. The fur beneath his hand becomes skin.

"Peter!" 

They stop fighting and turn in unison towards the voice. Peter's frozen, all color drained from his face as Cora pushes past Stiles and stumbles out from the trees, naked and human.

Stiles feels a trace of sympathy for a moment at the love in Peter's voice as he whispers, "Cora?"

Derek races towards her, falling to his knees in a sob. He shakes his head, gathering himself up, and he demands, "Peter! Do you see us?" 

Peter looks away, refusing to answer, but Derek drags him over and grabs his head and forces him to bear witness.

"He sees us," Cora says, laughing through her tears. 

The clearing echoes with their happiness as Derek picks her up and twirls her and she squeals in delight. Stiles, still watching from behind a tree, feels his chest ready to burst at the beauty of the moment. 

Peter snarls and stands, eyes burning red. 

"Look out!" Stiles shouts. 

Derek and Cora turn in unison, claws out, striking their uncle down just before he strikes. They tear into him, ripping his throat, and mauling him until they wear his blood like clothes. 

When it's over they're kissing, open mouthed and filthy, and Stiles starts to walk away.

"Come here, idiot," Derek says, stretching his neck so he can see past the tree Stiles was partially hiding behind.

Stiles trips over himself to stand before them. The siblings look feral, blood-covered and fangs out. He's not afraid, not even as Cora tugs him down. 

They kiss him, taking turns with each other, then with him again. It's a tangle of lips and hands, claws rending clothing to shreds. Stiles knows they'll be walking naked back to the Jeep at some point, but he can't seem to care. 

"It's over," Cora says, like she'll never get tired of repeating it. 

Derek doesn't look like he'll mind hearing it for the rest of his life. Above them, the eclipse has come to an end. Lifting his head to the sky, Derek lets the sunshine rain down on his face and howls their victory.

Cora, grinning wildly, arches her back and joins him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [marguerite26](http://marguerite26.tumblr.com/) on tumblr. Hi.


End file.
